Cheltenham Residency 2025-26: Strauss & Mahler

English Symphony Orchestra
April Fredrick, soprano
Kenneth Woods, conductor

Richard Strauss – Four Last Songs (chamber version by James Ledger) 26’
Mahler – Symphony No.9 (chamber version by Klaus Simon) 80’

Composed in the difficult years just after WW2, Strauss’s final masterpiece could well have�been a despairing, angry work. Instead, the Four Last Songs stand as one of music’s most�inspiring expressions of gratitude – for long life, for long love and for a world abundant in music and nature.
The Ninth Symphony of Strauss’s friend & contemporary, Gustav Mahler – his last completed work – sees the composer working through deep despair and resignation (shaken to the core by the sudden death of his daughter in 1907) towards a resolution which abounds in gratitude and love.

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